Announcements

Hello folks and welcome to the last few weeks of summer.

For those of us who are teachers we are all too aware of our dwindling time without bells, books and kids.

For the parents - I'm sure you're counting down the days. (Hours? Minutes?????)

Whatever your situation, here we are in the first full week of August so enjoy what's left.

Have a great day - April

Wanna Get Smarter?

Then you'll love this! (Especially if you have kids going back to school!!)

We have the Britannica Ready Reference Encyclopedia (New for 2002) on sale for, (are you ready for this?) only $8.97 - and US Shipping is FREE!

Have you ever needed to find a quick answer to a burning question? Perhaps you were wondering exactly where you would find a "Crown-of-thorns" starfish or maybe you were curious about Maxwell's Equations. Well, you can find all that, plus information that's actually useful, in this handy reference CD ROM.

It includes over 25,000 articles, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, maps, over 1500 photos, and even videos. It even has a "best of the web" section that helps you do research on the web! These sites (150,000 of 'em) were hand picked by the Encyclopedia Britannica editors, so yes, they are very good.

Wait, I almost forgot. It also has this awesome Research Organizer that is a must for any serious projects. It lets you keep all your information in one place - even import outside information / photos - so doing a report or research project is actually, dare I say, easy! I only wished I would have had this back when I was in school (although back then we thought Windows were what we looked out of, not something we spent the day cursing at).

Again, this is only $8.97 and yes, US Shipping is FREE! Is that a good deal or what? I really like this one and I'm glad we can offer it to you at this price. It is probably about the best deal we've ever had on this type of reference title. Heck, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary alone is worth more than $8.97!

OK, enough talk. If you want in on this deal, better act fast. Here's the link for more info:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/britannica-reference-2002.htm

PS -Don't miss out! This would be a great gift for anyone going back to school this fall!

MS Office 101

Oops! I typed that with the Caps Lock on!

Waste of time? (You know, deleting the wrong case stuff and then re-typing the text.)

It could be if you don't know about Change Case.

Change Case is a simple little option I found in MS Word and PowerPoint that allows you to correct a case mistake without retyping. (Case referring to capital or small letters.)

Once you decide you need to make a correction you should highlight all the text that needs to be changed.

Then go to Format menu, Change Case option.

The Change Case window will open with a list of choices.

Pay attention to the formatting of the words in the list, they are actual examples of how the text will look once you make that choice. (Toggle case is to switch the case of every letter highlighted.)

Choose an option and then click OK.

Bam! Mistake fixed and you're on your merry way!

Office Tip of the Day

Drop Cap? What's that?

That ever so small, yet beautiful addition to the document is called a Drop Cap and you may be amazed at how easy it is to put such a great touch on your documents.

To put a Drop Cap on your publication you should first decide where the drop should happen.

Once the decision is made, the rest is quick and easy.

You begin by placing the cursor in the paragraph where you want the Drop Cap.

Then go to the Format menu, Drop Cap choice.

A Drop Cap window will open allowing you to choose which type of drop you would like.

The choice on the left is no drop, just the regular text.

The middle box will drop the first letter within the text, wrapping all the text around the larger letter. (Just like the paragraph I began the tip with.)

The last box will put the larger letter completely in the left margin.

When you choose either of the Drop Cap choices you should notice that the bottom of the window becomes active allowing you to decide three things. First, the font of the dropped letter; second, how many lines in the text the letter should drop and third, how far away the letter should be from the text

These three options are truly a matter of choice. The more lines you drop the letter, the larger it becomes.

I would also like to note that when you choose a font it does not change the font of the whole paragraph, just the letter to be dropped.

If you decide to change the font of the letter after it's been created, you can simply highlight the letter and change the font the same way you would normally change a font.

Now, during my research for this tip I was able to find a Drop Cap for both MS Word and Publisher 2000. (Publisher's Drop Cap is very similar to the Drop Cap in MS Word but as you will find, it has more artistic options. Not very surprising given the type of materials typically produced in MS Publisher.)

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a Drop Cap in either MS Excel or PowerPoint. The only way I could get this effect into either of these programs was to type the complete paragraph in MS Word and create the Drop Cap. Then I highlighted the entire paragraph and did a copy. (Edit menu, Copy or you could use the Copy button on the Standard Toolbar.)

Then I went to either Excel or PowerPoint and did a Paste Special, choosing the Microsoft Word Document Object choice from the list. This puts the paragraph into the slide or worksheet as an object (like a picture). It will have grabbers on the side for moving and resizing. In order to edit the text you'll need to double click in the paragraph. (When you complete the editing click outside the Word window and you'll go back to the slide or worksheet.)

Well, that's it. An easy and quick way to dress up a document with some artistic flair. Enjoy!